News

8 May 2017

Cross-phase STEM networking event

STEM networking event at Bottisham Village College - Tuesday 16th May, 2017, 3.45 - 5.00pm.
This is your opportunity to hear from STEM ambassadors and to find out how they provide a great resource to support staff CPD, curriculum development , enrichment programmes etc. Look on the ConnectEB website (http://www.connecteb.co.uk (Ambassadors tab))to find out more about this fantastic opportunity for pupils to ‘learn from experts’. There are over 2,000 Ambassadors in the area who volunteer their time and industry expertise in schools and really help to bring the curriculum to life and to provide CPD for staff.
To book your place, please email Sheree Forbes, sforbes@bottishamvc.org by Friday 12th May.
If you have any questions, do not hesitate to get in touch. If you have already had support from a STEM Ambassador it would be great to hear about your experience – would you be willing to say a few words about it at this event?
A message from Rob Farman – STEM Ambassador:
I am convinced one of the top priorities for STEM Ambassadors has to be “To educate the educators about engineering.”. After I delivered some CPD on engineering to 10 STEM teachers at a secondary school and followed-up with information on apprenticeships, a young STEM teacher wrote to me saying:

“Many thanks for coming in and talking to us last week. It was very interesting to hear about your career and also to find out more about how to get into engineering, something which I had previously no knowledge of.

That confirmed what I suspected after I presented to 230 children age 4-11 years old on the Apollo moon landings and then their Year 6 on engineering. The teachers said to me afterwards that they did not realise how much goes on in engineering and how complex it is. We need to explain to teachers that, that employers seek, underpinned by motivation and commitment: personal skills; hand & eye coordination skills and, as “a first filter” academic skills. We need to explain engineering is well-paid and the apprenticeship route. Too many are going to university and ending-up in non-graduate jobs.

Soundbites. Picking up the primary school:

“After I outlined, with pictures, the Apollo moon landings to 230 children age 4-11 years old, one child tapped me on the arm as I was sitting down and said “Well done.”; I was literally touched, it made it all worthwhile.”

“After I asked the Year 6 girls “Who is going to be the next girl to win a Nobel Prize for science, after Professor Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, still the only British woman to have won one?”, a girl shot up her arm like Apollo 11 blasting from Cape Canaveral and said emphatically “I am.”.

“Later, when I spoke about seeing a 25 metres swimming pool on the 7th floor of an office building at Canary Wharf, that same girl shot up her arm again and asked “What about the weight of water?” “An excellent question.”, I said, “You are thinking like an engineer.”.”

At sixth form college a girl of 13 asked me:

““Is it true that only boys can become engineers?.”, to which I replied “Professor Dame Anne Dowling is the President of the Royal Academy of Engineering, our most prestigious engineering body.’’